CPA#1 wrote: Kfan wrote: You don't need a 75 on gleim. Gleim is harder than the actual cpa exam. I often got lower than 75 on gleim and still passed. That doesn't mean slack off, but don't freak out if you're not getting 75 on gleim. Gleim questions are tough. Kfan- I have something I would like to ask you. I took several practice questions on Gleim over the past few days. Earlier this week, I got two 73s in a row. The next time I took a practice set, I get a 66. Then I get a 76 (I finally got higher than a 75). Then I take a practice set last night and got a 70. Is this unusual that I'm going up and down like this?? Or did you experience the same thing?

It is common to take the practice tests and score all over the place.  Take as many practice exams as possible.  They expose you to the various ways these questions can be worded/approached.  Just going through this exercise repeatedly will lower your stress on test day.

Most important - study what you answered incorrectly.  I used to take the tests just to get the scores as a metric of how well I was studying.  But I did not go over the questions I missed and spend time learning why I was missing them.  Once I started studying that way, my scores really improved on every test I took.  It's a grind, and I hated doing it, but my scores reflected the effort.  I pass FAR with a 77%, then started studying this way and did AUD 90%, REG 85% and BEC 85%.

Good luck and keep plugging away at it.

You know, as I take more and more practice test, I’m finding that I’m getting questions wrong mainly not because I don’t know the material, but because I’m not reading properly. A lot of those Gleim questions are worded in a very confusing and tricky manner. So, I end up not fully understanding what the question was asking and I pick the wrong answer. I then get the solution to the correct answer and I’m like “Doh!!! I knew that!!! Had I just read the question more thoroughly and more carefully, I would’ve understood it better and been able to answer correctly.” Or sometimes, I just get tricked in picking the wrong answer either because I didn’t watch those dates or because I didn’t read the question carefully. So, I slap myself for it. It really is annoying. I would be getting in the mid-80s on ALL of these practice sets if I only were more careful with the way I’m reading and approaching these questions.

Of course, I have to practice reading and answering these questions quickly while being careful at the same time because we all know that the FAR exam has a lot of time pressure. I got one more month left until my test day. I’m going to get myself to master these questions if it kills me.

And yes, after answering these Gleim questions, I discover certain areas I’m either weak at or am forgetting. So, I write down the topics as I do the practice exam and then I go back to the topics later and go over the material once again. So, basically I’m doing these practice sets to help me learn to approach these difficult CPA questions and at the same time, I’m using it to diagnose what areas I need to study more.